Europe. Whether true or false. And for a moment it even occurred to me that I might join in. Why not? That I might myself remark on the need to use a constitution to reinforce those characteristics we Europeans, north south east west, do doubtless have in common, to wit our belief in reason, our belief in progress, our belief in technique as the tool of reason for the promotion of progress, not to mention our post-Christian obsession with charity, with self-sacrificial love (showing solidarity to a man the mother of whose child was in hospital with an incurable disease), our respect for animals, ancient poets and dying languages, our undoubted vocation to solve the problems of the entire world, the planet, the cosmos (substituting ourselves for the loving God we have lost), our unslakeable thirst for the imagined gratitude of those nations (and animals) we shall save — all these creditable characteristics might usefully be reinforced, I could have said, perhaps interrupting Doris Rohr, who was now airing that stale piety about Germans feeling safer from themselves in a United Europe, by a constitution of immense sophistication that took into account at every point the need to make decisions collectively, across nations, across religions, across classes, across economic categories, industries, regions, and then across those even deeper divides that separate the old and the young, the sick and the well, that make the old incomprehensible to the young and vice versa, the sick incomprehensible to the well and vice versa, right down to that deepest divide of all that keeps men and their women, women and their men, in a state of total and mutual and irretrievable incomprehension. Collective decision-making was the key, I might have said announced proclaimed in the foyer of the European Parliament, and I was suddenly amused to think that should I choose to, I myself, Jeremiah Jerry, as people have frequently called me, could make the bold proposal to use a new European constitution to engage every element of society across the entire continent, wherever its borders might eventually be established, in the decision-making process and thus simultaneously and necessarily to render, which is surely the European ideal par excellence, every aspect of life political, and hence, with patient planning and negotiation, soluble, from cross-border immigration to the size of a condom and the quality of a mushroom and the strength of a perfume. As problems in a relationship could also always be solved, dissolved, she said, if only two people were sincere and thus had all the facts before them to manipulate. But I insisted, on that particular evening, that there had been no problem before she had decided to be sincere. Before she so gratuitously told me of her infidelity. The problem was her sincerity — why on earth had she told me? (why had I told my wife?) — her gratuitous sincerity relative to the generosity, so-called, of her friendship towards a man who sent her flowers and phoned insistently, the mother of whose child was dying, slowly, of muscular dystrophy. Her sincerity was mere bragging, I told her that evening. And again this was a time when I hit her, no, when she asked me to hit her. Bragging about her sexual escapades, bragging about her sensitivity towards this sufferer, bragging about her confessional vocation. If it makes you feel better, go ahead and hit me, she said. She was naked. Go on, she insisted. She screamed. Hit me! She said it in French. Frappe-moi! And when I hit her it was always across the face, the facade. Her generosity! No, when I hit her it was across the mouth, the mouthpiece. How was this kind of sincerity going to help us solve anything? I shouted. I hit her where the words came. The waterwords. I felt desperately ugly, desperately stupid. And breathing deeply, there in the impressive foyer of the European Parliament, breathing out long and slow as if one could simply exhale one’s angst with a lungful of air, I almost choked out laughing to think that I was perhaps about to make this bold political statement, in favour of the most comprehensive constitution the world has ever seen. Was I going to make it? After all, and this came home to me with some force, gazing around the smooth surfaces of wood and marble and brushed metal laminates, after all, You have nothing against Europe. So you told yourself, with some surprise. You have nothing at all against Europe. It was a surprise for me to realize that. Or such projects in general. You have nothing against the fantasy utopias of Black Spells Magic, or the ecology movement, or happy monogamous marriages, or even the United Colours of Benetton. You just happen not to believe in them. Not to be able to believe in them. It’s a detail! A joke. It wouldn’t get in anybody else’s way. And for a moment I allowed myself to imagine how I might say what I had just thought of saying and how she might feel grateful to me for making such a contribution, for applying my intellect, such as it is, to the not inconsiderable problem of a constitution for a United Europe, and how she might say, with a bright, intelligent smile, that if I didn’t mind she would rather like to introduce my central concept of, what shall we call it? permanent pan-factional compromise, into her preamble, the preamble to the constitution she hoped would win her the prize of a year’s scholarship in Brussels. This she would say loudly in the presence of the Welsh MEP’s secretary, who might be useful, if only in bringing her to the attention of the Welsh MEP, who was Vice-president of the influential Petitions Committee. She might even, I told myself, should I actually say what I had thought of saying, and should she then be in a position to get a word in edgeways — the Avvocato Malerba having this minute taken it upon himself to hold forth to all the young students, only two of whom were boys, on the principles that had inspired the original architects of the Community (of whom not the least important, he insisted, was the Italian Alcide De Gasperi) and namely, above all, the desire to eliminate forever the threat of armed conflict between our nations, of violence between one European and another, he claimed, which would always be civil war, the Avvocato Malerba said, family violence, he insisted, fratricide, as in Bosnia at this very moment, while the Welsh MEP’s secretary (herself from Yorkshire it seemed, a county not without a certain vocation for civil war) was now suggesting that we might follow her towards the left hemisphere of the building — yes, had she been able to get a word in edgeways in all this group confusion and the general fervour of solidarity that had invaded our coach party upon entering the indubitably impressive, not to say lush, atmosphere of the European Parliament (and if anybody was capable of getting a word in edgeways it was her), she might have wanted to thank me, I mean for my idealistic formulation, had I formulated it, and bestowed a smile on me, one of her quick French pouty smiles, a smile which would doubtless have reminded me of so much. But I didn’t say it, I did not propose the notion of permanent pan-factional compromise, just as I didn’t quote Thucydides. And more than anything else perhaps, my reason for remaining silent, as all the girls now chattered about Europe and we proceeded up a gracefully curved staircase, was that I was looking forVikram Griffiths. Not because I wanted to remark to him on the absence of the Welsh flag, which in fact I had now forgotten, but simply because I was suddenly intrigued, surprised, disconcerted by his absence, and perhaps because I had begun to nurse a vague fantasy that at the very moment I was to stand up to address the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament I might, with nothing in my head, feign some kind of illness, or even collapse, mental or physical, and, perhaps gasping for breath, choking, invite my colleague Dr Griffiths, doubtless better prepared than myself, to speak in my place.